Intelligent Enterprise

I was surprised to read this week that Dave DeWalt, one-time EMC rising star and former Documentum CEO, is leaving EMC to take the reigns at McAfee as CEO and president. DeWalt headed Documentum during its most innovative and aggressive years, and he spearheaded the sale of the company to EMC in 2003. He subsequently spearheaded EMC's fast-growing software division, but last year he took a less visible role as President of Customer Operations. In the same vein, long-time Documentum marketing executive David Milam left EMC last fall to join Zantaz.

I had quite a few interviews with DeWalt in my days as editor-in-chief of content management-focused Transform Magazine, and I always thought he was among the sharpest executives around. A company's magic rarely rests with one individual, but as Neil Raden recently pointed out in a blog on consolidation in the business intelligence market, great leaders can certainly make their mark on a company. I'm sure DeWalt's departure from EMC is about being offered a great opportunity to once again be the top executive, and I wish him well.

Speaking of BI, my colleague Mary Hayes Weier over at Information Week just posted a story based on an interviewed with EMC CTO Jeff Nick, and when she asked him about future acquisitions, he encouraged her to "read between the lines" about the many things he had to say about BI and analytics. Add another name to the list of big vendors interested in buying into BI.